Abortion is a crime and no one has “right” to have one, says Guatemalan cardinal

Guatemala City, Guatemala, Aug 20, 2008 / 01:04 am (CNA).- The Archbishop of Guatemala City, Cardinal Rodolfo Quezada Toruno, said this week that abortion is a crime and the murder of an innocent human being. Nobody has a “right” to get one, he stated while nothing thatall Guatemalans must defend life from conception to natural death.

In his homily on Sunday, the cardinal explained that abortion is simply the “killing of a child in his mother’s womb.” Those who practice this infanticide “reduce the meaning of human life to a simple fetus.”

After noting that life begins at conception, the cardinal stressed that “everyone has the right to be born, and anything deliberately done to obstruct this right to life is a crime.”

Referring to pro-abortion and feminist groups who are working to make abortion a “right” for women, Cardinal Quezada stressed that abortion will always be a crime and that “there are some things we must call by their name. A crime can never be turned into a right,” he said.

“No one, under any circumstances, can assume the right to directly kill an innocent human being,” the cardinal underscored.

“It is just as serious to kill a 10 year-old child or a 20 year-old adult as it is to kill a baby in his mother’s womb,” he went on.

Recently in Guatemala, 71 lawmakers signed the “Book of Life,” an initiative intended to safeguard the right to life of children in their mother’s wombs. A small group of abortion supporters protested the measure, claiming it would affect the “rights of women over their own bodies.”